


When Reyna Fell in Love (Strawberries)

by skatefasteatgrass



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, for a pjo secret santa 2018!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 12:59:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatefasteatgrass/pseuds/skatefasteatgrass
Summary: Reyna fell in love many times. She had her heartbroken even more.But in the end, she didn't need romance. All she needed was the people she already had.(a journey through what I believe Reyna's life may have been like, told through the times she fell in love and watched others do the same)For @hylla-is-a-lesbian





	When Reyna Fell in Love (Strawberries)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thetasteofsunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetasteofsunshine/gifts).



Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano is seven years old when she falls in love for the first time.

Her name is Tia, and she has dimples and freckles and eyes that look like they’ve been carved from yellow topaz. She’s in Reyna’s class at school, sits at the front of every class, raises her hand to answer every question with a grin on her face. Reyna watches her from the back, tucked away in her little corner because Hylla told her that friends don’t last forever.  
She watches with a fluttery stomach and a fast-paced heart. Her right hand scribbles out what her teacher instructs, takes notes and draws little houses in the margins, but her mind is determined to stay focused on Tia.

Tia has a glowing, cheerful personality that matches her auburn braids, tied together in a bun at the back of her head. She says hi to Reyna when they cross paths in the hallways, sits with her at lunch and gives her the strawberries her mother always packs for her because she doesn’t like the seeds. Reyna is hesitant at first—there’s only a matter of time before Tia turns bitter and angry like her father did, like Reyna is scared she herself will one day turn—but warms up to her eventually. She takes Tia’s strawberries with a shy smile, and gives her her liquorice in return, because Reyna doesn’t like liquorice, but Tia is obsessed with it. She returns Tia’s kind waves in the hallway and even grins at her, despite the clear looks of dislike on Tia’s friends’ faces.

Eventually, Reyna moves to the front of the classroom so she can sit with Tia. She knows Hylla would be disappointed, but Tia is so nice, and it is so hard to believe that she won’t last forever.  
When Tia pinky-promises Reyna that she will not tell anybody about her secret, the secret Reyna accidentally mutters on a Monday afternoon, Reyna knows Hylla is wrong. Some friends _do_ last forever, and can be trusted. So that Monday afternoon, Reyna tells Hylla what she’s found out.  
“You’re going to get into so much trouble,” Hylla scolds, and Reyna looks away from her. She stares out the window at the setting sun, glowing against the stucco buildings. “Nothing lasts forever. You’ll lose her before you even get a chance to know her properly.”

Reyna ignores Hylla, and runs down the street barefoot, even though it’s getting dark and her father will drag her back home to ‘protect’ her, so she can go meet up with Tia at the park, like they organised. Tia waits and waves with a smile, freckles, dimples and all, amber eyes wide and sparkly. She calls out her name and Reyna calls out ‘Tia!’ because she’s excited, something she doesn’t feel too often anymore. They sit in the swings and push themselves back and forth, talking about everything and nothing, sharing stories and secrets and pinky-promises. They do that until it’s late, and Reyna is still giddy when she’s at home and hiding from the ghosts, because she’s never had a friend like this before. Reyna’s never loved somebody like this before.

Two weeks later, Hylla arrives on the shores of Circe’s island with Reyna tucked into her arms, the little girl crying and yelling out for Tia, yelling out for the only friend she’s ever had.

* * *

Reyna is twelve when she meets a girl she thinks she might have a little crush on.

Hylla brings her into the spa with her usual smile. She’s talking in soothing tones, and the girl has light blonde hair that is frizzy and dirty and a little bit stiff. Her eyes mimic a storm over the ocean, the ones Reyna likes to watch from her room on Circe’s island, and there’s a relieved smile on her lips.  
“This is Annabeth,” Hylla introduces the girl. Reyna springs to her feet and clutches her comb, lips parting to allow her best customer-service grin to take over. She’s gotten used to this life, she thinks, but one thing she has never enjoyed is watching those boys get turned into rodents. She thinks it’s a little bit cruel, and a little bit unnecessary, but it’s a small price to pay, to witness, for such a luxurious life.

“Hello, Annabeth,” Reyna choruses with the other servants. She taps her fingers on her comb when Annabeth’s eyes land on her.  
“There’s a lot of you,” Annabeth points out bluntly. Hylla nods and guides her to the hot springs with a hand on her back. Something hot spikes Reyna in her stomach when she sees her sister’s hand on Annabeth. She doesn’t know what it is.  
“We work for Circe!” Quincy, the girl a year younger than Reyna, exclaims and begins to paint Annabeth’s nails in a pretty silver colour. Reyna takes a handful of Annabeth’s frizzy hair and drops it almost immedietly.  
“Is my hair that bad?” Annabeth asks, fingers touching the strand gently. Reyna shakes her hand feverishly, red splotches crawling up her face.

“It’s just a little dirty, is all.” Reyna tries her utmost best to keep her voice calm and cheerful as she scoops some hot water into a jug and pours it gently over Annabeth’s head. The girl sighs and closes her eyes. “I’ll clean it for you, and comb it.”  
“Thank you,” Annabeth says with sincerity. Reyna has not heard anybody thank her so genuinely since she and Tia used to swap snacks. She drizzles another bout of water down Annabeth’s hair.  
She tries to keep her attention solely on the blonde curls as she twists grape-scented shampoo into it, rinses it, and starts with the conditioner. But it’s difficult, because Annabeth is telling stories of great adventures, of a place called Camp Half-Blood, of a boy named Percy Jackson that has come here with her (Reyna forces herself to bite her tongue at this part), of her friend Luke, who has started working for a Titan named Kronos.

It’s all so new and exciting for Reyna. All she’s known for the past five years is how to do hair and how to apply makeup. She encourages Annabeth to keep talking, to keep telling stories. She especially likes the stories about this ‘Camp Half-Blood’, but she can’t say why. Perhaps it’s because everything about it seems entirely impossible, and yet here is Annabeth, living proof that it _does_ exist. Perhaps it’s because the camp has strawberry fields, and Reyna loves strawberries.  
Reyna dries Annabeth’s hair quickly and starts to comb it with her gold-toothed tool. The blonde strands bounce in princess curls with every stroke, soft beneath Reyna’s fingers. Annabeth isn’t really telling stories anymore—she’s just talking, about this and that, about her siblings and her mother and her father, about the city she’s going to build when she grows old.

Reyna is hypnotised by her voice, so caught up in Annabeth that she barely registers what her hands are doing—they weave on their own, braiding with gold thread and lifting the curls up and down.  
“I’m going to be an architect, y’know,” Annabeth says with bold confidence, kicking her toes softly in the water. “I’m going to build a whole new world for myself.”  
“With all of your friends?” Reyna asks politely, ignoring the glares Hylla is sending her way. Annabeth nods.  
“With Grover, and Thalia, and Luke, because I’ll get them back.” She beams. “And Percy, even if he _is_ a little annoying.”  
“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Percy being annoying anymore,” Reyna says, flinching when Hylla elbows her sharply. Annabeth seems so happy about spending her future with her friend, and Reyna wants to warn her of what will happen to the poor boy.

“Yeah, maybe Circe fixed him.” Annabeth opens her eyes again and sits up straight. “I should go see him. Make sure he’s okay. He makes things difficult for himself all the time.”  
“Maybe you should.” Reyna lets go of Annabeth’s hair, and stands up. She feels a little sick on her stomach at the thought of what Annabeth will encounter when she wanders into that next room. She watches Annabeth go with a pain in her heart, waiting for the scream of anger.  
All she hears is silence, for a bit.  
But then there’s a lot of shouting, of metal on metal, and when Reyna and Hylla run out to see what’s going on, there are a lot of pirates. Too many pirates.  
Reyna isn’t strong enough to fight them off when they throw her and her sister on their ship.

* * *

On Reyna’s fourteenth birthday, she realises she’s in love with her best friend.

At first, it had all seemed like a fleeting crush. Jason Grace is kind and sensitive and generous, and Reyna has always craved the acceptance of others, so she could tell when she liked him. But when she blows out the candle on the little cupcake Jason has bought her from her favourite bakery in New Rome, she looks into his sky-blue eyes and it finally occurs to her that this is more than a harmless crush.  
She doesn’t tell him. How could she? It’s obvious he only sees her as his best friend, and to be honest, Reyna is quite content with keeping their relationship like that.

She likes it when he drapes his arms around her shoulders after training and she bats him away because ‘you’re sweaty and disgusting, Grace’. She likes it when they share the bowl of jellybeans after a long day and talk about their plans for the future, talk about how weird it feels to be growing up and getting older even though they still feel like they’re living their childhoods. She likes it when she gets to make up stories when people ask where Jason got the scar on his lip, likes it when he laughs and says, ‘she’s lying, she gave it to me because I ate the last strawberry’. She likes their friendship and, oh boy, she _loves_ Jason Grace.

“Good cake?”  
Reyna looks up from the case of her cupcake and smiles from the corner of her mouth, conscious of the frosting on Jason’s nose. She doesn’t tell him it’s there.  
“Incredible cake,” she replies. Jason has remembered that her favourite kind of cake is red velvet with strawberry frosting, and she can’t help but feel like it’s such an intimate gesture to get them for her on her birthday. Maybe that’s just her heart talking, and maybe she’s nuts, but it’s a nice feeling.  
“The bakers said they could make the frosting cream cheese, but I said you didn’t like cream cheese.” Jason pops the last of his cake into his mouth.  
“I can’t believe you remembered,” Reyna admits. “Not even my sister ever remembered my favourite.”

Jason licks his fingers with a kind smile, his eyes crinkling. Reyna’s heart flips.  
“It’s not that hard,” he says. His hair glints white in the dim light of their praetor’s office, and if Reyna isn’t careful, she’s going to accidentally tell him that he looks like an angel.  
“Sometimes I have trouble remembering things,” Reyna says quietly. She’s not sure what compels her to confess such a thing, but she goes with it anyway, because she trusts Jason with everything she has.  
Jason’s face turns surprised, his lips forming a little ‘o’.  
“You do?” Reyna nods. “I do, too. I thought I was the only one.”

“What type of things don’t you remember?” Reyna asks. She picks a red jellybean from the bowl and bites into it. It tastes like fresh strawberries—Reyna loves strawberries.  
“I don’t really remember my sister.” Jason looks frustrated now. “Like, I know I had one. I know she was a lot older than me. But I have no idea what she was like, and… it makes me sad. What about you?”  
“I don’t really remember much about the only friend I ever had.” Reyna wishes she didn’t feel so sad on her birthday. She’s beginning to wish she never brought this up. “I remember her name. It was Tia. And I remember how nice she was to me, and that she had amber eyes, but not much else.”  
Jason ponders this statement for a while, chewing on the scar his lower lip holds. Reyna watches him with a heavy heart, because she truly does miss Tia, and there’s something about the boy in front of her that she thinks may be similar to Tia, but she can’t place her finger on what it is.

“I think,” Jason says slowly. Reyna’s eyes snap up to meet his. “That now you don’t have to worry about forgetting the only friend you’ve ever had.”  
“Why?”  
“Because now you have another friend, and you’re never gonna forget me.”  
Then Jason laughs, and Reyna can’t help but do the same, because Jason is her best friend and she’s in love with him and his laughter is infectious.  
And the very next day, Reyna wakes up to find that he has completely disappeared.

* * *

Reyna is sixteen when she falls in love again—but this time, she’s falling in love as a sister. Not romantically.

Nico di Angelo is small, and stubborn, and bitter and a little lost. And when Reyna looks at him, she wants to wrap him in a blanket and tell him ‘get lots of rest’, because he has bags under his eyes the colour of bruises. He puts on a tough façade and build thick walls, but Reyna has seen herself do the same thing countless times before, and she knows just how to break them all down. Knows how to tell Nico he isn’t alone.  
She knows he doesn’t like being touched, so she keeps a cautious distance, but still shows pride in little gestures when he looks comfortable enough. She pats him on the shoulder gently when he’s done well, and tells him exactly that. She makes sure he’s eating enough and makes sure he’s feeling okay, presses a hand to his forehead when he looks sick.

Even after the war has ended and Nico decides to stay at Camp Half-Blood, Reyna keeps in touch with him. She makes sure he’s able to Iris-message, makes sure he sends letters when she sends him hers, makes sure she visits to see him. She knows there are people other than herself that will take care of him, but she wants to know he’s okay.  
Because, even if she won’t admit it, even to herself, she is afraid.  
Reyna is afraid of losing Nico to the shadows.  
She is afraid that if she doesn’t keep talking to him, he will be consumed by overwhelming darkness, and she will lose him like she lost Tia all those years ago, like she lost the memory of a girl she thinks she misses.

So Reyna visits his camp and watches his progress. She watches him learn how smile again, then watches as the smile gets wider and wider and soon he’s laughing. Soon she can hug him whenever because he’s not so sensitive to affection anymore. The two of them, a power duo not to be fucked with, play volleyball against Percy and Jason and kick their asses, spar and kick each other’s asses, get coffee and just _talk_. Reyna has never had a brother before, never had a younger sibling, but she’s pretty sure having Nico as a friend is the same thing. She loves teasing him when he stumbles a little on his words when he’s talking to pretty boys (or one pretty boy in particular), loves hearing him say ‘shut up! At least I wasn’t ever in love with _Jason Grace_ ’ through giggles, loves snarking back ‘like you weren’t’.

Reyna is pretty sure that this time around, she’s not losing anyone. It fills her with content, with happiness she didn’t think she would be able to achieve—not after the pirates, and not after the ghosts. It’s a happiness that makes her job as a praetor a little bit better, because sometimes things happen and she gets to laugh a little even if Nico isn’t there, because it reminds her of one of their inside jokes. When she loses members of her legion she still mourns, but she rests easy knowing Nico will help guide them to Elysium on her request.  
Of course, there’s still that small voice in the back of her mind that sounds an awful lot like Hylla, telling her that friends don’t last forever. That Reyna will lose Nico, too.

But Reyna has gotten rather good at ignoring the voice that sounds an awful lot like Hylla. She brushes it away and pegs a balled-up piece of paper at Nico’s head, peeling into cackles when he sputters and races to find the ball before Reyna can run away.  
Reyna’s cheeks hurt. This is the most she’s ever smiled in her life.  
Nico does not disappear.

* * *

Reyna is seventeen when she watches her little brother fall in love.

She and Nico are resting in the strawberry fields at Camp Half-Blood, talking a little but mostly eavesdropping on the nymphs. Reyna leans back on her hands, long legs stretched out in front of herself, head tilted backwards to bask in the afternoon sunlight. Her heart almost jumps out of her throat when she hears Nico’s voice.  
“Have you ever been in love?”  
Reyna opens her eyes and looks directly in Nico’s face. He’s red and flustered and watching somebody Reyna isn’t in the right position to see. She arches an eyebrow.

“I have,” she replies, and does not elaborate. Nico doesn’t ask her to. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt and taps his toes on the grass, chewing some kind of gum Reyna thinks he might have stolen off Percy.  
“I think I have.” He says, then swallows and licks his lips. “It’s scary. I’m scared.”  
Reyna appreciates the honesty, but she doesn’t know what to say. Does she comfort him? Congratulate him?  
A flash of a memory, dimples and freckles, echoes in her mind, but she’s struggling to remember where it’s from. Who it is.  
“Don’t be scared,” she tries. Nico furrows his brow. She tries again. “I mean, does he love you back?”  
“I hope so. He said he did.”

Reyna sits up straight, back completely vertical like Lupa used to berate her for until she managed it.  
“Who?”  
Nico avoids Reyna’s gaze and glares down at his shoelaces.  
“Will Solace.”  
And suddenly, Reyna isn’t so on-guard. She knows Will Solace. He’s a nice boy, genuine and sweet and good at expressing feelings. She likes him. And if Nico really does love him, what can she do about it but support him?  
“Nice.” Reyna leans back on her hands again. “Good catch.”  
Nico kicks her in the shin and groans.

“No, seriously, he’s a good kid,” Reyna assures Nico, her hands up in front of her chest. “I approve.”  
“Didn’t realise you were my sister, Ramírez-Arellano.”  
Reyna grins.  
“You didn’t?”  
Nico rolls his eyes and offers Reyna a strawberry from the bush behind him. She takes it and chews it slowly, savouring the flavour. It reminds her of somebody.  
She doesn’t remember who.

* * *

Reyna is eighteen years old, watching fireworks with Jason Grace’s head on her shoulder, Annabeth Chase’s hair on her lap and Percy Jackson’s hands clutching her arm when she realises that she doesn’t need to fall in love anymore.  
Somewhere next to her, Piper Mclean is counting stars and whooping for every new flash of light in the sky. She laughs when Hazel Levesque jumps a little at the bangs and pretends to clutch her heart, while Frank Zhang smiles softly and watches quietly.  
Close by, Nico di Angelo’s voice rings steadily as he tells stories of the time he and his older sister carried a statue halfway across the world with the help of a goat. He tells jokes and receives hearty chuckles from a pretty boy with blond hair that falls in curls in front of his blue eyes.

Reyna notices all of this, notices all of her friends, because she has been thinking.

She has been thinking about what Aphrodite once told her—that a demigod would not heal her heart. She has been thinking that Aphrodite was wrong, so very, very wrong, because Reyna is sitting with her family and her heart is full and mended with only a few scattered scars.  
And she doesn’t need to fall in love. Not anymore.  
Not when she has these people, her friends, _her family_ , right here with her.


End file.
